


Subtle

by TsingaDark



Series: Lost Inside My Mind [4]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Bisexual Dan, M/M, Parent-Child Relationship, Self Confidence Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-11 17:37:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10470435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TsingaDark/pseuds/TsingaDark
Summary: It’s Wednesday and Dan’s going home in two days. Whenever he thinks about it, a familiar queasy feeling takes up residence in his stomach. It’s not that he doesn’t want to go home, because he does. He can’t wait to see his brother and the family dog again. But then there are also his parents and that’s where the problem lies.





	

**Author's Note:**

> many, many thanks to Allie ([tumblr](http://trigatriskaidekaphobia.tumblr.com), [AO³](http://archiveofourown.org/users/inimitablemarie/profile)) for beta reading. honestly, what would I do without you??
> 
> this can be read as a OS, so you don't necessarily need to have read the other two parts before reading this
> 
> as always, this is fiction and I don't claim to know Dan's parents, this is just something that I needed to write for myself

It’s Wednesday and Dan’s going home in two days. Whenever he thinks about it — and the fact that he has yet to pack (although he’ll probably procrastinate until the last minute again) — a familiar queasy feeling takes up residence in his stomach. It’s not that he doesn’t want to go home, because he does. He can’t wait to see his brother and the family dog again. But then there are also his parents and that’s where the problem lies. 

He loves his parents, he really does — they’re his  _ parents _ , after all. And anyway, everyone’s parents are annoying from time to time, right?

Except Dan’s parents aren’t annoying. If they were, he probably wouldn’t feel this anxious every time he visits them. 

The point is, they haven’t even done anything wrong, not really, but Dan still has mixed feelings about them. Most of the time, whenever he prepares to head home again, he only feels excited at first, especially after not having been back home for a long time, but then when he’s there, he remembers exactly why he hasn’t visited in a while.

He’s always welcomed with open arms, and will be when he’s there in two days time, but it’s not the first bit that he’s anxious about, it’s the part that follows after all the faked warm greetings and pleasantries. The part where the questions start:  _ How is your video thing going? _ (the fact that they blatantly don’t call it his job makes it obvious enough how they feel about it),  _ How is your flatmate? _ (nevermind that Phil isn’t just his flatmate but his boyfriend),  _ What have you been doing apart from working at home? _ (they could’ve just asked if Dan does actually work). 

Dan isn’t even sure if they notice all of these subliminal accusations they bring into everything they say to him or about him; if they realise how much deeper each continuing question about his every step cuts, how much it really affects him. They probably don’t. They probably don’t even spare a single thought as to how their behaviour has changed and formed him over the years, how it made him critical of himself to the point where he didn’t like himself anymore. It made him want to be someone else, someone who fits all the societal norms his parents so obviously believe in, someone who is not complicated by being bisexual, someone who is simply better — basically someone who isn’t a complex human being with conflicting thoughts and too many opinions and too much awareness. Sometimes he still wants to be someone else, mainly when he’s at his parents’ place, but then he always remembers how miserable he used to be, wanting to change everything about himself, and knows that it’s not something that is ever going to happen. 

Still, that doesn’t stop the self-doubt from taking hold in his mind again, poisoning his thoughts. It’s nothing he can control after all those years of having that kind of behaviour ingrained into him. Maybe he’ll always look for the fault in himself first before considering that his parents could be wrong, that  _ they  _ could actually be the ones who don’t know better. Maybe it will always be that way. But that doesn’t mean that Dan won’t learn from their mistakes. His parents might’ve messed him up, might’ve left permanent scars, but all the more Dan will make sure that his children will be treated with more care, more emotional support, more  _ love _ . He knows he will be a better parent, has sworn to himself that he’ll accept his children they way they are and always support them no matter what, unlike his parents.

Thinking about having children gives him mixed feelings, though. Thinking about doing a better job at raising kids than his parents makes him feel guilty. They could’ve done so much worse and to be fair, they’d been fairly young when they had him. They’d wanted to live their life and Dan had kind of got in the way of that. 

Dan thinks he understands. He gets why he spent a lot of time with his grandparents when he was younger when his parents were off doing God-knows-what. But that doesn’t explain why they still behave the way they do, like Dan is still a nuisance. And maybe he is; maybe they never forgave him for interrupting their lives, despite Dan being their fault in the first place.

Subtle dread is settling in Dan’s stomach as those thoughts go through his head, and not even Frank Ocean’s voice can scare them away. It feels like he dwells on exactly the same thoughts every time before going to his parents’, just as his parents always behave in the same way when he sees them again. 

This time however, instead of working himself up to the point where he can’t sleep days before he has to leave, Dan closes his MacBook and pushes it off his legs onto the bedsheets. He rises, slowly so as not to go lightheaded from moving too quickly, and makes his way over to Phil’s bedroom. It’s not often that they spend the afternoon in their respective rooms but whenever Dan gets as anxious as he is now, he usually opts to hole himself up in his room, simply because he feels like he’ll be an annoyance to Phil. 

Now, he shoves away the niggling feeling of self-doubt that remains in the back of his mind, and tries to focus on the part of him that needs to be close to someone who undoubtedly cares about him and most importantly, someone who loves him exactly the way he is. 

Phil’s sitting on the bed when Dan comes in, a book in his hand that (for once) isn’t by Stephen King. He glances up as Dan climbs onto the bed next to him and curls up at his side but remains silent. Dan knows that Phil is aware of what’s going on inside him, that he knows about all the things Dan has only hinted at with self-deprecating jokes and side comments. Dan’s relationship with his parents is not something that they discuss often; they don’t need to. Phil is aware that nothing he says will actually make the situation better, that none of his words will make Dan’s parents behave differently. That doesn’t stop him from subtly making comments here and there, complimenting Dan as a person and telling him how good of a parent he is going to be. And while Dan knows what Phil is doing — Phil has never been nor will he ever be subtle — he can’t say that it isn’t effective. 

The words and actions of his parents might always have an effect on Dan, but with Phil, he knows that he actually means what he says and that the love he has for Phil is equal to the love Phil has for him. His and Phil’s relationship is most certainly not one-sided; they’re in this together, not out of obligation but mutual love. 

“Do you want me to read to you?” Phil asks, his voice low and pleasant. Despite the silence of the flat, it doesn’t startle Dan. Instead, he feels calmer all of a sudden, like Phil just scooped up all of those thoughts running around in Dan’s mind and put them in a box that Dan doesn’t have access to.

“Please,” Dan murmurs, sliding down a bit until he can comfortably rest his head on Phil’s shoulder. He breathes in the scent of Phil’s skin and relaxes when he starts reading out loud. The story doesn’t quite makes sense and Dan doesn’t know who all of the characters are since he missed the first quarter of the book, but he still listens avidly, soon becoming enraptured. 

He’ll still have to go home in two days, will still have to bear his parents’ constant questioning, will still feel self-conscious. But he also knows that Phil will always just be one phone call away, ready to crush the seed of self-doubt his parents planted in his mind, and really, all Dan needs is a little bit of support from someone that is family, even if not by blood.


End file.
